“Of course there’s manipulation. Manipulating audiences to some degree is what all shows and art do. I wouldn’t be doing my job if there wasn’t manipulation involved.” Seth Honnor is talking about his show The Money, which arrives at Battersea Arts Centre in south London this week as part of A Nation’s Theatre. “My job as the artist is to hide the mechanics, and the craft is in taking people on a journey that they didn’t think possible, one that they may still be mulling over weeks or even months later. At the beginning of the show, everyone tends to be lulled into a false sense of security because it is often so low key, even quite boring. By the end, people are going: ‘how on earth did we get to this place?’ It can be thrilling, but a bit scary, too.”

How the nation's theatre reinvented itself | Lyn Gardner

Read more

It is. You will have never have seen a show quite like The Money, a fiendishly slippery piece of game theatre conceived by Honnor and produced by the Exeter-based Kaleider. There are no actors and there is no script, but there is likely to be high drama as the playing audience must decide on how to spend a pot of money on the centre table. If, at the end of the two hours, everyone around the table is not prepared to sign an agreement stating how the money will be distributed or spent, the pot rolls over to the next show. Participants have given the money to charities and individuals, including themselves. Just as in any scripted theatre show, The Money has its highs and lows, lulls and moments of exquisite high tension, and all sorts of characters – villains, saints, winners and losers – emerge. When I saw the first performance, at the Guildhall in Exeter in 2013, it even had the arc of a well-made play, reaching a climax that was part tragedy and part farce as everyone suddenly realised that time was running out.

Honnor came up with the idea for the piece after watching Dragons’ Den on TV and being involved in Open Space Technology, a method of holding meetings and encouraging equality, discussion and decision-making that is familiar to many in the theatre world because of its pioneering application with the Devoted and Disgruntled events. He wondered how the two might be melded and used in a theatrical setting.

“I liked Dragons’ Den, but I didn’t like the fact that it was just a few people who decided how money is distributed and invested. After all, one of the biggest narratives and challenges in our world today is how we decide how we should share out the resources we have.”

In many ways, the least interesting thing about The Money is the money itself and how it is spent. The pot in the middle of the table becomes a metaphor, and the drama that develops around it is entirely in the human interactions – how power is held, where alliances are made and broken, how difference is negotiated and how decisions are reached. It’s a microcosm of our real, imperfect world and the psychology at play when big decisions are made, bargained and negotiated. Could you do better, or does self-interest always kick in?

After coming up with the idea, Honnor took 18 friends to a caravan, locked them in and got them to take part in an early prototype of The Money. The fact that they were kettled in a particular space added to the drama, and since then, it has been performed mostly in civic spaces. At BAC, it will be performed in the old town hall’s debating chamber and during its time in London it will also play one performance in the Houses of Parliament, where, every day, decisions are made that affect us all and where those making the decisions often behave very badly.

The Money – review

Read more

On that first caravan tryout there was a framework but no rules. “They tied themselves up in knots,” recalls Honnor. It made him realise that if the show were going to have a future it needed some rules, as with a game. “Establishing rules around what is a very simple concept gives people a clear sense of the task and challenge, but then the presence of the money makes them behave bizarrely.”

The audience all pay the same price for admission. But those who want to actively take part in the discussion and decision-making must offer a donation, too: a minimum of £10. They take their place around the table, while the rest of the audience act as silent witnesses. They can watch, but cannot speak. The cunning twist is that, at any point during the performance, any of the silent witnesses can buy their way into the decision-making by making a donation. Choosing the right moment can be a power play as calculated as anything carried out by Shakespeare’s Richard III.

At the performance I saw – the very first – the person who did this suddenly had a huge amount of power. After watching every performance and seeing how the piece has changed as audiences become more knowledgable about its nature (some have returned again and again), Honnor says that while those who buy in later have initial traction, particularly if they have a great idea, it’s hard to maintain it in the face of the group. “When people come in with an idea it gets problematised immediately.”

I’m not against art being difficult and challenging, but it does also have to be ethical

Seth Honnor

Every performance finishes with a glass of wine and a chance to discuss what has happened. It’s what Honnor calls “the drop-off”, and he see it as integral to the performance. It’s a matter of ethics: “People know what the deal is, it’s made very clear, and they are treated as adults capable of taking responsibility. But, of course, some people do come out and wake up and go ‘What have I done, how could I have behaved like that?’ They need a chance to process it and talk it through. I’m not against art being difficult and challenging, but it does also have to be ethical,” says Honnor. So far he has been wary of the considerable interest from TV companies in the idea. “I don’t want to hand it over. I don’t want to be responsible for a monster.”

But while The Money can bring out the worst in people, it can bring out the best, too. At the performance I saw, cringeworthy moments were balanced by acts of altruism, self-sacrifice, self-effacement, and quiet kindness.

“There was one really beautiful show when about halfway through somebody just asked: ‘What do we actually want to do?’” recalls Honnor. “There was a long period of silence as people realised they were being asked something much bigger than what they wanted to do with the money. The challenge of The Money is the challenge we all face: what do we want to do with our lives and how can we do it together?”